Lemont would not be the town it is today without its waterways. As local author Pat Camalliere so eloquently shares, these waterways “are so important to the growth of the entire Midwest, and the only place they all come together is Lemont.” Traveling to Lemont offers the unique opportunity to see the Illinois & Michigan Canal, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the Des Plaines River in one location.

Take a journey to the past and present of these vital waterways and learn more about their significance to Lemont during this running tour.

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Waterways of Lemont Running Tour

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Chelsey Stone

Lemont would not be the town it is today without its waterways. As local author Pat Camalliere so eloquently shares, these waterways “are so important to the growth of the entire Midwest, and the only place they all come together is Lemont.” Traveling to Lemont offers the unique opportunity to see the Illinois & Michigan Canal, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the Des Plaines River in one location.

Take a journey to the past and present of these vital waterways and learn more about their significance to Lemont during this running tour.

While standing in Lemont’s historic downtown, let’s first consider the historical context that inspired these waterways. It’s believed Native Americans lived in the area of Lemont as many as six thousand years ago. Various tribes occupied the area over those thousands of years, but as settlers began to arrive in Lemont, the Potawatomi were the most prominent tribe inhabiting the area. In fact, Lemont was originally named Keepataw, after the Potawatomi Chief residing here (it was renamed Lemont in 1850). And it was the Potawatomi who revealed the potential waterway passage that would connect the East Coast to the interior of the country via Lake Michigan (by way of the Des Plaines River) to the Gulf of Mexico. This discovery would change everything, but we’ll get to that.

For now, let’s leave downtown to run alongside these remarkable waterways.

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Start: Budnick Plaza

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Notice the waterway to your right? You’ve been running alongside the Illinois and Michigan Canal (I&M Canal).

The idea for a canal dates back to 1673, when the Potawatomi revealed a waterway connection to two French explorers: Father Jacques Marquette (a Jesuit missionary) and Louis Jolliet (a fur trader). This six mile marsh, known as “Mud Lake,” was all that lay between the Des Plaines and the Chicago Rivers—and a connection to the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. Water was the quickest, most convenient mode of transportation, so the explorers recognized how critical a water route would be for growth.

It wasn’t until the Fourth of July 1836 that construction began (to much fanfare) in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. Sparsely populated at the time, Lemont saw its population grow to 3,000 over the canal’s 12 years of construction. Nearly all of these early settlers came to work on the canal as contracted workers from New England or Ohio or as laborers from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, and French and English Canadians.

The canal’s 96 miles were dug by hand, back-breaking work, made harder by swampy conditions and a humid, insect-breeding climate. Though officially no one died while building the canal, these conditions bred cholera, typhoid, and what was known as “canal fever,” killing many who were buried at Lemont’s St. James at Sag Bridge cemetery.

The I&M Canal opened in 1848, but passenger traffic on the canal dropped precipitously as the first locomotives ran in Chicago that same year. Bulk freight was still cheap to transport on the canal, but when the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal was later completed in 1900, the I&M officially became obsolete. It closed in 1933.

By the 1970s, much of the I&M corridor had fallen into disrepair—its significance to the making of Chicago and Illinois forgotten or neglected.

But as you can see, not everyone overlooked the I&M’s significance. Lemont’s foresight in purchasing the canal in 1970 from the State of Illinois is why you have a path to run on today. You’ll learn about this corridor’s national designation at a later stop.

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Illinois and Michigan Canal

See those tall towers and rope climbs on the other side of the I&M Canal to the east? You are looking at The Forge: Lemont Quarries, a (according to their website) “state-of-the-art adventure park designed to deliver unique year-round activities for adventurers of all ages and abilities.” 

The Forge seeks to entertain with live music, outdoor festivals, and seasonal events; educate with summer camps and school groups, focusing on conservation and restoration; and exhilarate with ropes courses, ziplines, climbing towers, and more.

Of special interest to runners, several times a year the Forge puts on trail races, including a winter series that just might be the motivation you need to keep running through the colder months.

The Forge recognizes the significance of the surrounding landscape and history of the waterways and has been a partner in its restoration. In a discussion of their restoration work, The Forge shared that invasive species were intentionally incorporated into the landscape for a purpose: to keep out deer, bison, and other animals that threatened the livestock and lifestyle of early settlers. Now, efforts are underway to remove these invasive plants to replace them with and allow native plants and animals to thrive. The Forge Charitable Adventures set an ambitious vision to accomplish this and other restoration tasks.

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The Forge

As you briefly leave one canal, you are entering a wooded trail along another: the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (CSSC). Peer through the trees for a look.

Construction on the CSSC began in 1889, 41 years after the completion of the I&M.

In 1885 particularly heavy rains carried sewage into Lake Michigan (Chicago’s drinking water source), causing a deadly typhoid epidemic. Demands for a clean water supply could no longer be ignored. The newly formed Metropolitan Sanitary District (now the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) was tasked with solving this problem.

Their solution? Reverse the flow of the Chicago River. They proposed moving the Des Plaines River and digging a deeper channel into its vacated riverbed, reversing the flow of the Chicago River away from, rather than into, Lake Michigan.

As you can imagine, Chicago’s downstream neighbors were not thrilled at the idea of receiving the city’s sewage and industrial waste, so if you are not familiar with the clandestine way in which Chicago accomplished this, check out WTTW’s animated history of the river’s reversal.

As with the I&M, labor was at the intersection of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and Lemont. Construction began in Lemont in 1892 but proved particularly challenging because of the area’s rock base. Lemont’s quarry workers (more about the quarry industry later) were up to the challenge. Familiar with the material, they had developed technology and machinery specially equipped to excavate limestone.

Despite Lemont’s know-how, this project was otherwise so unprecedented that it was jokingly called the “Chicago School of Earth Moving.” Chicago Railroads capitalized on the novelty by offering excursions that stopped along the canal construction, so tourists could get off and see this unique project in action.

Lemont’s section was finished around 1896 and had increased the population to 10,000—the quarry and canal jobs attracting job-seekers from Poland, Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Italy. 

When the CSSC opened January 2, 1900, it linked the south branch of the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River at Lockport, Illinois—successfully reversing the flow of the Chicago River away from Chicago’s drinking water supply.

Aside from invasive plant species mentioned at The Forge, this is also a good place to discuss aquatic Invasive species. Connecting all of these waterways and removing natural barriers to aquatic wildlife means they can travel more freely and propagate throughout our waterways.

Species have accidentally been introduced by international freight when ships empty their ballast tanks, with species from their home port, into the Great Lakes. However, four species of carp native to Russia, China, and possibly parts of Vietnam are the greatest threat to our waterways and were intentionally introduced to US water in Florida to control an invasive plant species. There is a federal, multi-state, and multinational (with Canada) and very expensive effort to prevent their spread into Lake Michigan. Deterrents include electric barriers within a 1,500 foot section of the CSSC, as well as acoustic, light, and bubble deterrents. So far, these efforts have been successful.

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Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal

The Des Plaines River is the one naturally occurring waterway here but, as you’ve hopefully caught on, it too has gone through significant changes.

The Des Plaines River flows from just west of Kenosha, Wisconsin, through northern Illinois, before merging with the Kankakee River west of Channahon to form the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi River, which feeds into the Gulf of Mexico (that was a lot of geography; see maps).

Before European settlement, native tribes traveled the Des Plaines River Valley in canoes. Even before the canals, it was an ideal waterway for connecting south and west (to the Illinois River) and connecting north and east (to the Chicago River) with that portage at Mud Lake you read about earlier. For this reason, it was a heavily traveled river.

The Des Plaines River is more challenging to see from here, but it runs parallel to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal approximately 800 feet to the west. If there’s any boat traffic, that can help you locate it. On the other side of the Des Plaines River here is the Keepataw Preserve. You may recall that name from the Potawatomi Chief mentioned at the start. The segment of the Des Plaines River along the preserve is relatively intact, and there you can still see remnants of the quarry industry, like an old kiln smokestack.

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Des Plaines River

As we head back downtown, we can turn our attention to the Lemont Heritage Quarries Recreation Area.

Dolomite limestone (harder and finer grained than ordinary limestone) was discovered while digging the I&M Canal. Recognized as a suitable, marble-like building material with its buff white color and smooth finish (when polished), Lemont began quarrying the limestone before the I&M Canal was complete. Among others, Lemont’s St. James at Sag Bridge Church (mentioned earlier) and the Chicago Water Tower on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile were built with the material.

A quarry town by the mid-nineteenth century, saloons appeared on every corner in Lemont. By the late 1890s, Lemont became notorious for its Smokey Row—the wildest, most sinful street in the country.

Originally arising to meet the desires of the I&M Canal workers in the 1840s, Smokey Row was sustained—and thrived—thereafter by the quarry workers, as well as barge and railroad men. Chicagoans seeking to indulge in vices such as gambling, liquor, and “loose women” found what they were looking for in Lemont.

As with vice districts in nearby Chicago and cities across the country, there was tension in Lemont over the benefits from revenue generated by these establishments and some resident’s preference to be known as a Village of Faith, rather than sin. But once the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal opened in 1900, its workers left, and other building materials began to replace Lemont’s limestone. Smokey Row declined, and today Lemont is indeed known for its beautiful church spires.

The quarry brought further attention to Lemont when a strike broke out between quarry workers and owners over wage cuts in 1885. When quarry workers clashed with local law enforcement,  the Illinois National Guard were called in. During another strike in 1893, Governor John Peter Altgeld came to Lemont to mediate the dispute himself. The mural “There Comes a Time” in the 100 block of Main Street commemorates the deadly 1855 strike; be sure to visit it.

The quarry industry had declined by the early 1900s, but there are still remnants of it. Ozinga is a bulk materials and concrete supplier, and their Lemont Yard #220 is situated between the Sanitary and Ship Canal and the Des Plaines River.

While some former quarrying sites remain used for building industries, others have been turned into nature preserves, like the Keepataw Preserve on the Des Plaines River mentioned at a previous stop. The Forest Preserve District of Will County acquired this site in the 1970s and it is now a flourishing natural area for enjoyment and recreation. 

Lemont purchased its stretch of the I&M Canal from the State of Illinois in 1970. And while it took the Village a while to clean up the lands along the canal, by 2004 the Heritage Quarries Recreation Area was dedicated. The trail loop was created by Lemont volunteers, and after the Forge opened, they took on the maintenance of the trail system and have permission to expand it, under a license agreement with the Village and Township of Lemont. Former quarries along your running route are now freshwater lakes that offer fishing, adding yet another water feature in this area.

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Lemont Heritage Quarries Recreation Area

Here we’ll talk more about the celebration of the I&M Canal’s legacy. The towpath you’ve been running along was laid on both sides of the canals for mules pulling barges along the I&M Canal. Today the crushed limestone path provides recreation opportunities like your run. Five of the 61 miles of trails within the Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Area are here in Lemont.

In 1984 the Illinois & Michigan Corridor was the first corridor to receive the designation of National Heritage Area. When President Ronal Reagan signed the bill, he called it a new kind of national park that would combine preservation, conservation, recreation, and economic development.

Connecting the East Coast through the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and finally the Gulf of Mexico was tremendous for trade and travel. As people took advantage of this expanded access to the interior of the country, they brought their ideas and manufactured goods to the region. As a result, Chicago quickly evolved from a small frontier settlement to a burgeoning city.


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CHELSEY STONE

Waterways of Lemont Running Tour

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